ERATH COUNTY — Roughly 10,000 marijuana plants were seized in southern Erath County Friday in what state troopers are calling one of the largest drug busts in recent memory.

Police said the estimated value of the marijuana is in excess of $60 million.

The entire grow operation took place outdoors over several pieces of land south of Stephenville, police said. A photo from the Erath County Sheriff's Office shows some of the plants indoors at an undisclosed evidence storage unit.

At least seven law enforcement agencies assisted in the seizure, which was part of the Domestic Marijuana Eradication program, according to a release from the Erath County Sheriff's Office.

Dub Gillum, a trooper with the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Friday's bust is one of the biggest he's seen in his 25 years of work with the DPS.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, along with seven other Senators, has directed a letter to the Obama administration demanding regulators answer questions specific to the facilitation of research into the medical benefits of marijuana.

Senators acknowledged the need for unbiased research. They wrote, ”While the federal government has emphasized research on the potential harms associated with the use of marijuana, there is still very limited research on the potential health benefits of marijuana — despite the fact that millions of Americans are now eligible
by state law to use the drug for medical purposes.”

The Senators applauded a recent decision by the Department of Health and Human Services toeliminate the HHS Public Health Service review process. But they also acknowledged the drawbacks of NIDA’s monopoly on supply of marijuana for research purposes and the need for alternative providers.

Senators also questioned marijuana’s current classification as a Schedule 1 drug under federal law and its classification under international treaties and if the FDA is prepared to call for the reclassification of cannabidiol.

Israeli researchers have discovered that cannabis can be effectively used in healing broken bones and maybe other skeletal illnesses.

Scientists from the Tel Aviv University revealed that cannabis has a component which enhances the healing process of fractured bones. The study was published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

A curative component, called cannabidiol (CBD), sped up healing processes in the broken leg bones of trial rats with mid-femoral fractures. CBD is non-psychotropic and is also effective when isolated from tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive component of cannabis.

“While there is still a lot of work to be done to develop appropriate therapies, it is clear that it is possible to detach a clinical therapy objective from the psychoactivity of cannabis. CBD, the principal agent in our study, is primarily anti-inflammatory and has no psychoactivity,” said Dr. Yankel Gabet of Tel Aviv’s Bone Research Laboratory, as cited by the Tel Aviv university website.
To illustrate these findings, scientists tested two different groups of rats - one was treated with both CBD and THC while the other one only with CBD.